Is Arturo a mentalist?

I can't believe this incredible coincidence.

I've been reading Arturo's wonderful and interesting blog for some time, and today we started emailing each other offblog about non-bloggy things. In the back of my mind, there was a nagging feeling that he was so familiar to me, that I had known him before, in a previous life or something, but I dismissed it thinking that I was just enjoying what he was writing in his blog.

But where would I have known this very thoughtful architect who practices yoga and follows a CRON diet in San Francisco? I live in Seattle, but I have visited SF many times. (Don't think I knew him there) I work in a field that is not related to architecture. (So that's unlikely) We're both gay. (But so what?) He's on an austere diet; I'm on this asian food diet (Eat anything with two wings except a plane, anything with four legs except a table, etc.) No dice there.

So to follow this funny feeling, I posed this in my email:

"Did you by chance visit Paris a number of years ago? There was a student from
Miami who went to the same mysore class I attended at the shala in Paris. He had
a similar background as you, but he was a pretty new student, so I'm guessing it
wasn't you, but thought I'd ask anyway."

Turns out Arturo with his amazing memory recalled specific details of a conversation we had that I had kinda forgotten. He could not have just made up this stuff:

He remembered that:

- I was visiting Paris for a few days on my way to a wedding in France (Close, but it was Spain)

- I had been to this shala before when the entrance was through the patio and had been changed. (True)

- On my previous visit, I was swept into the room where a special workshop was taking place (True)

- The instructor was from New Zealand and demo'd a pose by putting her palms on the floor and floated up into a handstand (Pretty amazing recall, that was Louisa Sear from Byron Bay, Australia)

- I practiced one day, he returned for the rest of the week (I remember us talking about our intentions)

I don't think the Amazing Kreskin could do any better, folks.

So being the detailed oriented person that Arturo is, he looked up the date of his trip in his picture book--June 16 2003. When I got home tonight, I also looked up my trip notes which confirmed that date. I wrote that I went to 9:30 am mysore class at Samasthiti Yoga.

Now how would both of us remember so much of this seemingly casual encounter? Well, the schedule on the web indicated that class was supposed to start at 7:15 am. Both of us showed up around that time, but no one else did (I remember thinking, those flaky asthangis!). So we sat down on the steps and had a long chat until teacher Fabrize showed up.

Arturo also recalled teacher saying that I practiced well, but rather fast. Yup, that was me blitzing through my practice and trying to get back to the hotel so I could meet my partner and resume our visit in that great city.

Amazing, non?